Feral Hearts

by Edward P. Cardillo

  Actually, Paul told himself, it had all been Barry’s fault, really. Everything had kinda been going okay before he helped make everything turn to shit!

  From the moment they had been introduced in that silly initiation exercise the Rep had hosted in the hotel lobby, Paul had sensed Barry was a kindred spirit of sorts. He could tell straight away, though, that Barry was in the lower leagues when it came to his alcohol consumption and could in no way hold his liquor like Paul could. Still, at least there was someone on this trip that he could relate to.

  Paul was surprised. He had caught a couple of episodes of the reality show Barry starred in (his father’s television station had aired the first season) and had always thought the man came over as a bit of a prick. In real-life, however, Paul thought there was a chance the pair of them might become buddies.

  Of the other singles on this trip, Jamie struck him as a prissy little queer boy; Jenna had potential, but there was something a bit off about her, and she seemed to have some kind of OCD or some shit which Paul really couldn’t be doing with; Angela looked like a possible hook-up, and he thought she might just be a dirty little slut under that air of confidence and brashness she exuded; Lucy, though, was a definite no-no. He’d more than had his fair share of psychotherapists, or whatever it was she claimed to be, over the years. She’d probably be happier trying to psychoanalyze him than she would be fucking him!

  Paul had been happy finding out he was to be bunking up with Barry. He was less impressed with babysitting him as they walked about town, however. Still, when they’d stumbled across Feral Hearts and Barry had strongly suggested they go in despite the advice they’d been given by the Rep, Paul had quickly realized he’d been right. Barry was exactly his type of guy!

  With so few other available options in the group, and with little chance of any other fresh pussy joining them any time soon (with that bomb scare in London delaying flights ‘n’ all), Paul had positively jumped at the chance to go enter the club and maybe score a bit of action.

  That was where it had all gone wrong.

  * * *

  Viktoriya and the other girl, Anya (and surely it was my eyes…there was no way her tattoo kept moving, Paul thought), had taken them both back to their house. It was a former, long abandoned hotel situated up on the hill overlooking town.

  As soon as they entered, Paul recognized the house immediately for what it was. With its gaudy coloured lighting and the steady thump, thump, thump of hardcore Russian techno pumping out, it might well have been where the girls from the club all lived but it was also most definitely a house of ill repute.

  As soon as they were through the door, the two girls straight away began ushering both men upstairs. Paul caught a brief glimpse of a lounge area occupied by several women wearing very little, and then was escorted up a wide and very ornate staircase to the floor above. Barry was pushed into one room with Anya. Viktoriya pushed Paul into another, neighboring room lit by crimson coloured candles. It didn’t take long at all for things to start getting extremely hot and heavy.

  Viktoriya stripped down to her underwear, and she and Paul quickly started getting into it. Lots of kissing and lots of teasing ensued. After a little bit of coke, Paul soon found himself between her thighs, eagerly licking and tonguing her to orgasm. Rising to his feet, his erection bulging in his pants, Paul stripped down and slipped on one of the emergency condoms he always kept close at hand. As he turned to mount Viktoriya, she grabbed him violently and threw him on the bed.

  “I like to be in control,” she told him and climbed on after him, discarding her panties as she moved. Slower now, she lowered her slick wetness down upon his erect shaft and sensually began kissing and licking his neck as she thrust herself down upon him. Paul moaned and knew he wouldn’t be lasting long, not this first time at any rate. Then, from next door came the sound of breaking glass, raised voices, and screaming.

  Fuck, thought Paul. What’s Barry done now? I hope he hasn’t tried to pull off any kinky kind of shit…

  Viktoriya was up and off him before Paul had even had a chance to register that she’d moved. He grabbed his trousers, pulled them on, and nabbed his shirt from the floor as he followed her out into the corridor. Without even waiting for a second, Viktoriya kicked in the door of the neighboring bedroom. “You are so dead, motherfucker,” she hissed as Paul brushed past her and entered the room.

  Shit on it, Paul spoke solely in his mind. What the hell did that idiot do?

  Anya was lying on the floor, broken mirror glass and blood spread all around her. Barry was on top, straddling her, plunging a shard of glass in and out her neck. He had nearly taken her head off, and yet her glassy eyes still stared up at Paul coldly as though looking into his soul, even though any spark that might once have been there was now blatantly gone.

  Barry was bleeding and covered in blood. Pools of it ran down the hand holding the mirror glass he’d attacked her with. It was also flowing freely from a bite wound to his neck. The bite had just neatly missed his jugular.

  “Christ, Barry, you fucking killed her! What did you go and do that for?” Paul cried.

  Barry stared up at him, only now registering Paul was there. “Look at her Paul…look at her. She’s not human! Fucking bitch bit me!”

  Paul looked down, and at second glance could see exactly what Barry meant. Anya's mouth was open, frozen, not in a scream as Paul had first thought but caught paused in the act of taking a massive bite.

  Inside her mouth were teeth. Sharp teeth. Too many teeth. Whatever Anya had been, there was no mistaking now that she could ever possibly be considered human.

  Paul turned towards Viktoriya, about to ask what the hell was going on, but she held up her hand and rested her crimson nails against his naked chest to stop him.

  “Not so fast, Lover Boy…” she told him. “You two cattle aren’t going anywhere. Your friend killed Anya. Now both of you have to pay the price…you belong to me now. Everyone in this town belongs to me."

  Her face was beginning to change. Her eyes were narrowing to cat-like slits, her jaw starting to extend. Paul thought he saw fangs descending where her normal teeth had been only moments before.

  “Fuck!” Paul hit Viktoriya hard with a right cross. He kicked out with his foot, sending the bitch, or whatever the fuck she was, right across the hall where she connected with the wall with a loud thud.

  Paul thought he might’ve broken her neck as she slumped to the floor. Years before, he had spent some time in illegal underground fight clubs and knew how to attack and attack hard.

  He reached over and pulled Barry to his feet. “C’mon, man, we’re getting the fuck out of here.”

  The pair hurried to the end of the corridor where Paul had spotted a fire escape. Behind them Viktoriya started getting back on her feet again, cracking her neck back into place. “That’s it. You just try and run, you motherfuckers!"

  Paul pushed down on the bar of the fire door and yanked Barry with him out into the cool night air.

  "There's no place for you to go,” she called after them. “We own this fucking town!"

  Paul and Barry quickly began descending down the fire escape. No sooner had they hit the ground then they did indeed begin to run.

  * * *

  The only reason Viktoriya had gone down, Paul reasoned, was because she had been in the midst of a change; likewise Anya. That was how Barry had managed to kill her. If either of them had finished transforming into whatever they had been changing into, Paul had no doubt that both of them would now be dead.

  “We gotta get back to the hotel,” Paul told Barry, still bleeding from the neck. His hand appeared to have stopped it for now, though Paul didn't think it'd take much to get it starting again.

  Paul fingered his own bite marks, which were less severe than Barry’s. “We’ll take the back and side streets. They won’t expect that. They’ll be expecting us to take the most direct route.”

  “What if we get lost?” Barry asked.

&
nbsp; “We won’t,” Paul replied. “I never get lost. It’s kind of a talent I have, like a sixth sense.”

  They fled into the night…

  * * *

  Viktoriya was pissed off, really pissed off. She had first lain eyes on Jamie whilst abroad for a meeting of the Vampyre Council, when she had spotted him in the street below the empty apartment where she was hiding out.

  She quickly became obsessed. She wanted him for her new human servant. Her last Renfield (their name for human servants taken from a popular book by a certain Bram Stoker, more as a kind of in-joke than a tribute) had died in her services, and she had yet to replace him. She sensed Jamie was a pretty-boy, a bit effeminate and weak-willed, but thought that he would serve her well nonetheless.

  In the weeks and months that followed, she manipulated his life, broke his will, and reduced him to a fragile mental state. Essentially, she made him need her.

  Then she called him to Italy to be with her.

  Her plans had all changed tonight, at the Club, when she had first met Paul. In a single instant, Jamie became nothing to her. Paul was so much stronger mentally and would present her with much more of a challenge, but she knew as soon as she saw him that she needed him beside her.

  Viktoriya now planned to have Paul fill the role that had once been intended for Jamie. What could she say? She was fickle. A few centuries of un-life could do that to a girl.

  Viktoriya and Anya had brought Paul and the male-bull companion he was with back to their townhouse lair. Anya had wanted to play with the big stud whilst Viktoriya converted Paul, but unfortunately that had ended very badly for Anya.

  Now both Barry and Paul were going to have to pay. The whole town was going to have to pay. Viktoriya decided she had enough of this Italian provincial town. It was time to move on and find a new home for herself and her girls, preferably before any vampire hunters managed to find them and get back on their trail.

  Tonight Derosso was going to burn. When she and her brethren were done, Viktoriya and her girls were going to leave nothing left.

  Nothing but ashes.

  * * *

  Paul expertly guided Barry around the side streets as though he had lived in Derosso all his life. He had no explanation for how he did this. It was just a knack he'd always had.

  As they ran, the sounds of screams and baying at the moon could be heard all over town. Paul didn’t know what was going on, but he did know they needed to get off these streets and back to the hotel, like now.

  Eventually, they arrived. Paul waited till the night porter on duty was looking the other way, and then snuck them both back upstairs.

  Paul was trying to keep things quiet. Unfortunately, Barry had become almost delirious—crying and shaking, rendered almost useless for now through a combination of pain, shock, and horror at what had just gone on. Paul was running on adrenaline. Though he could barely remember doing them, the drugs were still running through his system and keeping him going. When he eventually came down, it was gonna be a bitch.

  Suddenly, two of the girls in their group, Lucy and Jenna, burst into their room. There was no sign of Angela.

  * * *

  "What do you mean vampires?" Lucy asked.

  "You know," Paul tried valiantly to explain, "vampires. Big teeth, scary eyes, allergic to garlic."He couldn't blame Lucy. He wouldn't have believed it either if he hadn't seen the girls from the club both start to change.

  "To be fair," Barry interjected, “we don't know that they're allergic to garlic..."

  Paul just stared at him.

  "Er, guys," Jenna was calling from the window. "Isn't that Jamie down there? What's he doing?"

  * * *

  Jamie stood before Viktoriya in the front courtyard of the hotel and gently shivered. If anything, she looked even more gorgeous and desirable than before, but at the same time Jamie was more scared than he had ever been in his entire life.

  He had done exactly as she bid. Surely, now things must’ve been over between them. As much as he wanted her, secretly Jamie also wished he could just walk away and never look upon that face ever again.

  "Is that it?" Jamie asked. "Are we square? Will you finally leave me alone?"

  "You are free," Viktoriya said reluctantly, “but first I need your assistance for one last thing...I need you to die."

  Jamie stood there, frozen in fear, unsure for a moment if he had heard her correctly. Viktoriya raised her hand and the former men folk of the town, driven insane by blood lust, rushed forward to leap upon him.

  "Feed, my minions," she called out to them. "Eat, drink, and grow strong!"

  Jamie tried desperately to fight, but there were too many of them. He felt hands, claws, and nails tearing at him, ripping off pieces of his flesh so that they could feed.

  He tried to scream, but the bitter taste of salty copper filled his mouth as he began to drown in his own blood.

  * * *

  Jamie’s thoughts were full of regret. He had never planned for things to end this way. He had never meant to sell out and betray his fellow travelers, but from the first moment he had realized the truth, that he had been drawn here, that Viktoriya had lured him here like a fish on a hook, Jamie’s fate had been sealed.

  Jamie had come here to get away from the dreams and visions he had been having ever since his ex-girlfriend Mary had disappeared back in New York, shortly after confronting Viktoryia. His vain attempts to form other relationships, following her disappearance, had all ended in disaster. This holiday was supposed to have been his fresh start, his chance to get away and start friendships anew. Only it hadn’t worked out like that.

  Viktoriya had been waiting for him. She had set all these events in motion just so that she could pull him deeper into her clutches. She had ‘persuaded’ him to betray his new friends so that they could feed together and strengthen the bond between them that Viktoryia had begun to build with him back in New York.

  Only something must have happened, that bitch must have changed her mind, because as soon as Jamie had done exactly as he was bid, Viktoryia had turned around and betrayed him just as she had expected him to do to the others!

  Now Jamie was receiving the kind of justice normally reserved for those of his kind—traitors. In a way, he thought it was a kind of Karma.

  Jamie was torn. On the one hand, he rued the day he had ever laid eyes on Viktoryia. On the other, he cursed himself for being so foolish as to ever consider they might share a future together.

  In his final moments, Jamie fervently wished he could say he was sorry to the others, apologize for selling them out the way he had and for ever involving them in Viktoryia’s sadistic manipulations, but it was too late.

  Jamie was dying, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  Thankfully, he did not suffer for long.

  * * *

  Viktoriya and her fellow vampyre stood back as her revenants ripped apart the mortal once known as Jamie. They were no longer human, but not yet full vampyre either. They were more something in-between. They were weak souls, the former men-folk of the town, driven insane by bloodlust and their frustrated desire for the power they knew they would never be allowed to receive.

  Neither fully one thing nor another, they were useful for brute force when needed, such as tonight, but for very little else. Once they helped her destroy the town, Viktoriya would leave them here to burn along with all of the other cattle and would simply create more of their kind as and when needed.

  In truth, Viktoriya and her brethren were not really vampyre either. That was just a name they had appropriated for themselves over time, taken from the stories passed along by humans trying find an explanation for what these creatures that preyed on them were.

  The majority of such stories were false. Though sunlight weakened them and hurt their eyes, it was not true that it killed them outright, for example. Likewise, though their bodies were far stronger and much more impervious to damage, it was not true either that they could not be killed.
Anya was a prime example of that, but Anya had been clumsy.

  Viktoriya and her brethren had been around for centuries and were one of mankind’s only surviving predators still around today. Because they had grown adept at staying hidden through hiding in plain sight, thankfully only a small proportion of their prey actually still believed in their existence, and these were few and far between.

  These few had named themselves vampire hunters and dedicated their lives to tracking down Viktoriya and her kind. Currently the last of these that Viktoriya had encountered were still in Russia. They knew that their prey left to start new lives elsewhere, but had no idea where.

  After tonight they would. The burning of Derosso would be used to send them a message.

  Don't fuck with us!

  Viktoriya raised her hand again and summoned her sisters to gather all around her.

  "Blue," she called to her new second in command, now that Anya was gone. "Take a few of the girls and some of the revenants and spread throughout the town. Disable all the vehicles first, and then start slaughtering and feasting on the cattle. Tonight we are going to have the feast to end all feasts, but I want to make sure NONE get away. The young calves die first, their flesh will be sweeter.

  “The rest of you, follow me! The ones responsible for the death of Anya and their friends are inside. Kill them all, but leave the one named Paul for me. I want him for myself. Anybody touches him and I will stake you out and leave you to the mercy of the hunters that will be arriving in the aftermath. Do I make myself clear?”

  Her comrades all cheered in response, so loud it momentarily interrupted the revenants from their meal.

  "Then let's go!" Viktoriya commanded. As the hoard split up to go their separate ways, one group headed towards the rest of the town whilst the others followed Viktoriya through the double doors in front of them and into the lobby of the Derosso Grande.